I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

[SuperBiasedMan]

My username is just my actual names stuck together as one word.

[SecretAsianMan]

I can't remember if I've asked you this or not before.  Did you used to be one of the regulars on Joystiq, probably 3-4 years ago?  When I started hanging around here, I was pretty sure I remembered you from the 'stiq, and it was a good sign for this community.  I used to comment there under my actual name (Courtney), but I think I had the same avatar pic.

 

My name origin is pretty simple.  Bjorn was the name of my first D&D character (a drunken Dwarf fighter who wielded a greataxe).  When I started making online accounts, it was just one of those natural things to use that name, since a lot of my early accounts were gaming related and I named soooo many characters Bjorn.  I've usually had to add something to it though.  I think the Idle Forums might be the only place I've ever had just Bjorn. 

 

Side note:  The lady and I actually met during that campaign, and to this day she also still uses the name of her character from that game for most of her gaming related accounts. 

 

This is the second internet forum I've gotten regularly involved with, the first being Co-optimus.  I was a regular there for about a year but then I got busy with work and just never managed to get back to it.  I'm almost certain I found out about Idle Thumbs through there but for the life of me I can't remember exactly how.  Actually I've been meaning to message you and ask if you were ever on there because I thought I remembered some Bjorn/dwarf combination from there.

[clyde]

... and then ended up using the name at a few LAN parties, which made my friend weirdly furious for stealing his "idea," but I guess we weren't close enough for me to change it?

This made me chuckle.

[JonCole]

My usual handle (jonac13) is just a construction of my first name (Jon), my initials and my age at the time I initially made it (I'm a tiny baby).

[Yasawas]

I signed up on XBox Live naively using my real name and surname initial and just immediately found it freaked me out enough to pay to change it out when people I didn't know called me by it, even though it was usually friendly enough. Except for that one guy (in my first ever online game, ever!) who sent me all these anti-Semitic messages because my name is Steve and I'm Scottish and apparently that makes it likely I'm Jewish. People are strange. 

 

This current one is the first song title I liked that I could have to replace it ("Rhino Jockey" was taken, sadly) and handily enough with the exception of Twitter it doesn't seem to have been claimed in any service I've signed up for in the last ten years.

[Bjorn]

This is the second internet forum I've gotten regularly involved with, the first being Co-optimus.  I was a regular there for about a year but then I got busy with work and just never managed to get back to it.  I'm almost certain I found out about Idle Thumbs through there but for the life of me I can't remember exactly how.  Actually I've been meaning to message you and ask if you were ever on there because I thought I remembered some Bjorn/dwarf combination from there.

 

That's it, it was Co-Optimus not Joystiq!  Yeah, I was around there as Bjorn for awhile, even wrote a couple of articles for them.  I eventually drifted away, but I'm still friends with Nich Puleo on Facebook, so get updates about how its doing now and again.  I just went there to see what avatar I used, but they've deleted their forums, so all that is gone.  That's a bummer.  I really liked that place, but it wasn't ever a very high population forum.  I used to chat with justabaldguy occasionally as well, but haven't heard from him in years. 

 

I'm pretty sure I found Idle Thumbs around the time that the old Joystiq Podcast went away because of the McElroys and Grant going to Polygon and I needed a new gaming podcast to listen to, which happened to coincide pretty closely with the Thumbs Kickstarter. 

 

 

My screen name comes from some gender stuff I've mostly worked through and a desire to be JB Fletcher.

 

Who didn't want to be Jessica Fletcher at some point?  I had what might be an oddly deep love for that show for having been like an 8 year old when I was watching it. 

[SecretAsianMan]

That's it, it was Co-Optimus not Joystiq!  Yeah, I was around there as Bjorn for awhile, even wrote a couple of articles for them.  I eventually drifted away, but I'm still friends with Nich Puleo on Facebook, so get updates about how its doing now and again.  I just went there to see what avatar I used, but they've deleted their forums, so all that is gone.  That's a bummer.  I really liked that place, but it wasn't ever a very high population forum.  I used to chat with justabaldguy occasionally as well, but haven't heard from him in years. 

 

They got rid of their forums?  That's a shame.  I haven't been back in years but I still have several people from there on my friends list (including justabaldguy who I still game with on occasion).  When they started up their user blog section, I made a series of entries about my first PAX.  I later started a series I called Talking Points which was focused on gaming analysis, starting with the various types of co-op and how it affected game design.  I made a couple more in the series and had a bunch planned but I never did finish it.  I liked that place a lot too but you're right about the population.  It was never really big enough that you got a lot of involvement, which is a shame because I'm a sucker for co-op games and its so hard to find partners.

[Bjorn]

I wonder if those user blogs also got deleted, I kind of remembered those PAX ones you wrote and was going to take another look at them, but couldn't find them. 

 

I'm a little irritated that I no longer have a byline on at least one of the pieces I wrote, for some reason its just credited as Staff now.  It's probably that the byline name linked to my forum profile, which has now been deleted.  They were unpaid stuff that I just wanted to write because I knew more about the subjects than anyone on staff, but as long as an article is up, the correct byline should be on it.

 

I also realized that I was in fact NOT Bjorn on those forums, I was Roland, which is my second go-to screen name for a lot of things.  Roland came from my obsession with Warren Zevon, and specifically the song

.    But I'm sure I had my gamertags linked at various times, which would have always been Bjorn related. 

[Vasari]

Giorgio Vasari is usually considered the first art historian. He was a weird eccentric who wrote a serious of biographies on artists that were half factual and incredibly detailed, and half made-up gossipy stories and exaggerations. Also it's easy to pronounce and people on the internet can't turn it into a dick joke, so it's pretty safe.

[SecretAsianMan]

Roland definitely rings a bell.  I think I always mentally called you Bjorn cause I had added you on some friends list for Steam/XBL/PSN but at some point I forgot what the association was.

 

I remember once when they said they were looking for writers and I submitted a couple articles.  One was a review (I think for L4D2 which was new at the time) and another was a serious piece about... something.  I can't remember what.  It might have been the basis for my Talking Points blog.  I never heard anything back, not even a polite "thank you but go away now".

[Zeusthecat]

When I first got my cat back in 2003, I was going to name him God because I had recently abandoned my religious beliefs and was super excited to commit a bunch of guilt-free blasphemy. But I decided I'd rather not needlessly offend my religion enslaved friends and went with Zeus instead. When I first signed up for an Xbox Live account in 2005, Zeusthecat was the first name that popped into my head. Unfortunately it was taken and I was a major stoner so I went with Zeusthecat420. Then, when I graduated, I renamed it to xXZeusthecatXx because I wasn't very creative and it fit the naming convention of some of the other guys I was playing Halo 3 with regularly.

 

I wish I had named my cat God instead. Because then my username here would have been Godthecat.

[Bjorn]

Roland definitely rings a bell.  I think I always mentally called you Bjorn cause I had added you on some friends list for Steam/XBL/PSN but at some point I forgot what the association was.

 

I remember once when they said they were looking for writers and I submitted a couple articles.  One was a review (I think for L4D2 which was new at the time) and another was a serious piece about... something.  I can't remember what.  It might have been the basis for my Talking Points blog.  I never heard anything back, not even a polite "thank you but go away now".

 

That was kind of weird.  The few pieces of mine they published were all just things I pitched individually, and I always heard back very quickly each time I pitched.  But when they actually put out a call for a new regular/staff position I also applied and never got a response back on it. 

[elmuerte]

Ooh... origin stories.

 

When I started my Mexican wrestling career it was common practice that you started of with your stage name being just the last letter in your first name, which in my case is "L". Only after you won your first real battle against a properly named wrestler you were allowed to come up with a name based on whatever was related to the fight. I won the fight on the the 31st of October, which is the Day of the Death, or Día de Muertos. And given the fact that the Grim Reaper is just a cool guy, I picked L Muerte, which became elmuerte.

[dartmonkey]

My name comes from video games, sort of. In the UK in the late '90s I was an avid N64 Magazine reader. On the letters page they had Correction Corner where readers would call out misprints and typos and the staff would invariably blame them on the art monkeys. When I needed a username it just popped in there. Except it was taken. So I donned my pretension cap and came up with d'artmonkey. Apostrophes didn't agree with the internet so that got deleted and voila. Except when dartmonkey is taken and then it's thedartmonkey. Should've really gone with 'therealdartmonkey' but I'm exceptionally lazy and resent entering long usernames and passwords.

[Trip Hazard]

Objet d'artmonkey

[tegan]

I use my real name or a truncation of it for more personal spaces like this. In other places I use UnitNumberFive, which is an Evangelion reference that happens to be kind of generically cool enough to not embarrass me.

[Reyturner]

Worst case scenario, you could claim it's a Short Circuit reference.

[Merus]

Ooh... origin stories.

 

When I started my Mexican wrestling career it was common practice that you started of with your stage name being just the last letter in your first name, which in my case is "L". Only after you won your first real battle against a properly named wrestler you were allowed to come up with a name based on whatever was related to the fight. I won the fight on the the 31st of October, which is the Day of the Death, or Día de Muertos. And given the fact that the Grim Reaper is just a cool guy, I picked L Muerte, which became elmuerte.

 

Screw all these other people, that is an origin story. It ha the mask and everything. I request more stories about your luchador days!

[clyde]

I was walking down the street and someone said "Hey Clyde!" and I turned around to look. He was talking to me. I liked it. So I started introducing myself as "clyde".

[Valorian Endymion]

My nick (which I only use in the net) does have two origins, nothing fancy however: "Valorian" is modification of the name of my character in a old gurps campaign, he was called "Valerian", it did turn in "Valorian" when I was playing Might and Magic VII, where while naming one of my character I did start to experiment some name variants and this one shows up and sticked around. The "Endymion", as some of you might guess, did came from Sailor Moon, which I am a big fan. The whole thing, "Valorian Endymion", was the name of my main character on Ragnarok Online for a very long time and how some friend I did meet there know me.

[Merus]

NO-ONE TOLD ME DROD: THE SECOND SKY WAS OUT

 

IT HAS BEEN OUT FOR SIX MONTHS

 

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN

 

I'M BLAMING ALL OF YOU JESUS CHRIST

 

YOU'RE ALL FIRED

 

I AM VERY, VERY UPSET RIGHT NOW

 

I JUST NEED A MOMENT

[Bjorn]

Would it help if I told you I had never even heard of DROD?

[Reyturner]

Wait. Is this Deadly Rooms of Death? I've heard VGHD talk about it.

[tegan]

Worst case scenario, you could claim it's a Short Circuit reference.

 

I would honestly consider that worse.

 

That movie does not hold up.

[Patrick R]

Short Circuit 2 on the other hand...